


you said you'd be there

by evilythedwarf



Category: Friends
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Joey/Phoebe if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 17:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike dies and Joey comes home. He doesn't go back to California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you said you'd be there

Joey comes home in September. He missed New York and he missed his friends and Mike is dead and no one has seen Phoebe in weeks.

\- - - x

Ross picks him up at the airport, and drives him straight to Monica and Chandler's. He's worried about Phoebe, and he really hopes Joey can get through to her, but he’s also itching to tell him about Emma’s adventures in kindergarten, and Ben’s stellar performance in middle school and how happy he and Rachel are, and he looks sideways when he tells him this, taking his eyes off the road for a second, like he wants to see Joey’s face when he hears Rachel’s name, just in case.

He’s not really listening. He looks out the car’s window’s and sees house after house. They’re all different, but they also kinda look the same to him. It’s strange, being in New York without the noise. Also, he’s hungry.

Ross slows down about two blocks before Chandler’s. He points at a tiny house, like the ones in children’s books, surrounded by a yard and so many different kinds of flowers it makes him dizzy. It doesn’t look like the other ones, at all.

“This is Phoebe’s,” he tells him. “They bought it in July.”

Two blocks over, Chandler is waiting for them, sitting on the front yard playing with Erica’s two trucks.

\- - - x

It takes him no time at all to find her. She’s staying with Frank Jr. and she’s the one who opens the door, carrying little Chandler on her hip. She lets the girl down and steps outside, closing the door behind her.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen, you know?” she says.

“I know,” he says, wrapping her arms around her. “I know,” he repeats as he strokes her hair.

Her knees give and he breaks her fall. They sit on the front steps of her brother’s house, Phoebe wrapped around him, shaking. When it starts getting dark he gathers her in his arms and tries to carry her inside. It doesn’t go well.

“I can walk,” she tells him, but she doesn’t let go of his hand.

Joey stays for dinner, and he stays for dinner afterwards, and then he crashes in the sofa because he doesn’t want to leave her. He can’t sleep - the sofa is lumpy and it smells like crayons - so he’s wide awake when Phoebe comes downstairs and sits next to him.

“I’m pregnant,” she says.

\- - - x

On Halloween, he and Chandler dress up as a mummies and try to scare the neighborhood kids. A very big 5th grader hits them with a baseball bat.

\- - - x

Joey, Ross and Chandler put together the cribs for Phoebe’s twins. Monica brings them cookies and milk and they all fall asleep with their heads on the new mattresses. Rachel takes pictures.

\- - - x

He paints the nursery lime green.

\- - - x

Phoebe names her girls Isla and Imogen. They take them to the park near his old building.

\- - - x

In August, the Days people call him.

He doesn’t go back to California.


End file.
